Podcast transcript: Creating inclusive cultures for neurodivergent employees

Beth Hall: This podcast is recorded on Wurundjeri land. I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land, and the land on which you are listening today. Welcome to Season Two of Let’s Take This Offline, a podcast from the Australian HR institute that brings you closer to the minds helping to shape the future of HR. My name is Beth Hall, and I’m the general manager of HR standards and capability at Ari. I’ve been in people and culture for over 15 years working with dynamic organisations globally, that focus on strategies to enhance workplace wellness and performance and are passionate about advancing HR to create positive work environments. And my master’s in Organisational Psychology has been instrumental in shaping my approach to HR. Neurodivergence is sometimes invisible within organisations, either because people have become experts at masking it or because they don’t feel safe enough to disclose their neurodivergence to their managers or teammates. This means there’s untapped potential sitting within our organisations that we are missing out on. In this episode, we will chat with Aron Mercer about the practical ways that we as HR practitioners and DEI champions can design safe inclusive work environments that leverage the unique strengths of neurodivergent talent. And Mercer is part of the founding team at Xceptional, a social enterprise with the dual purpose of supporting newer divergent people into careers while educating employers on inclusion. He is also an adjunct industry Fellow at Griffith University and holds a Bachelor of Science and a Graduate Diploma in Business Management. In this episode, you’ll hear all about how we can combat the fear of getting it wrong when supporting neurodivergent employees, how we as HR practitioners can factor no diversity into stages of the employee lifecycle, and how to ensure our organization is going beyond simply paying lip service to New out inclusion. There are lots of important lessons in this episode. So I hope you enjoy it. And thank you so much for joining me, can we kick off with you telling me a little bit about yourself and Xceptional and why you do what you do?

Aron Mercer: Yeah, look great to be here and really excited for this conversation. I want to start by saying I’m broadcasting today from the lands of the turbo and Jaeger people in southeast Queensland, just wanting to acknowledge them. So we started Xceptional in 2017. And it’s really a privilege to be able to connect my personal identity in terms of someone who identifies as neurodivergent in ADHD or from my whole life, but was diagnosed when I was in primary school. So we started Xceptional with the dual purpose of connecting neurodivergent people, mostly autistic people with tech jobs and, and working with employers on how to get the best out of them and include them in the workplace. And that work continues today. These days, we focus more on enablement. So training managers looking at systems change across the public and private sector.

Beth Hall: Such important work, and I’m so pleased to talk about it. No doubt, you’ve got lots of stories to share with our listeners today, which is really great. Before we get into those kinds of stories and context around it. Let’s just all get on the same page. When we talk about neurodiversity. What does that include? You’ve mentioned autism. You’ve mentioned ADHD? Can you just share with our listeners, from your perspective? When we talk about neurodiversity? What is it?

Aron Mercer: It’s a great question to start with, because often language trips people up and people are scared to say the wrong thing. And so that really can be an inhibitor. So neurodiversity describes the idea that people experience and interact with the world in different ways. And there’s no right way of learning or thinking or behaving. So as a group of people producing this podcast, we are neurodiverse, and individual can’t be neurodiverse. But as a collective we are, it’s not a new concept. So it’s actually coined by an Australian woman called Judy singer in the late 1990s, who wrote a thesis around challenging that the medical model of understanding of conditions like autism. So we think about the medical model really where a condition like autism is something that needs to be treated. Just and cure it in a way, and really flipping that and saying, Well, there’s constraints in society. That’s the social model. And with that comes great strengths. So neurodivergent means different from neurotypical. It’s an umbrella term, it encompasses things such as autism, ADHD, and dyslexia. And it’s not a niche grouping, you’re talking about 15% of the population, it’s about 1.2 billion people, which, if it was a country, it’d be almost the size of India. So we’re talking about a large group, but a group that has lots of different conditions associated with it. And often we focus on a really narrow sliver, so largely male representation for conditions like autism. And that’s changing as tools around that diagnosis change and around awareness as that grows through things like the media.

Beth Hall: Yeah, it’s really interesting when you share those stats with me, like, I feel like neurodivergent people are going to overtake neurotypical people. There’s that much diagnosis happening in schools that parents are then saying, oh, there’s a gene associated with Oh, I am to, it’s almost like this label is helping people understand themselves better, and why they are the way they are, and why they think and process information the way they do. So I’m surprised it’s only at 15%. To be honest, it’s great to see in younger generations, the normalization of this conversation, and the label actually being quite welcomed and freeing. And when I think of my parents generation, the label was the naughty kid in school, as opposed to actually embracing the strengths that that neurodivergent thinking brings.

Aron Mercer: Yeah, and I think yeah, I was that naughty kid at school. So I was diagnosed at 12. And often the stereotype is really a Bart Simpson kind of character disruptive in the classroom, I’m able to sit still, always looking to make their own fun, and, and that that is that is a sliver. But I’ve got neurodivergent kids, myself, and I don’t talk about them in presentations and things. But having gone through that process of diagnosis, I totally relate to parents then sitting and if you weren’t already understanding that you are neurodivergent, the questions that are asked in those appointments with pediatricians really lead to self reflection, and one of the fastest growing segments for us and Xceptional are women in their 30s and 40s, who have been misdiagnosed or missed throughout their lives. Often they’re better at masking. So they’re better fitting in and and also the diagnostic tools. The surveys that are some of them are many decades old, largely point to what might be considered male behavior. So women are getting diagnosed, and then reflecting back on understanding themselves better. And then thinking, Well, what does that mean for me personally and in the workplace. And so there’s this whole unpacking going, I had someone say to me that getting diagnosed in their late 50s made a difficult and challenging kind of upbringing, and confusing simply kind of challenging, they were able to kind of make sense of what had happened to them retrospectively. And now they were thinking, well, how, what are the strings associated with that? And how do I? How do I make the most of that? Yeah, that myself?

Beth Hall: Yeah, it’s interesting. I was talking to someone that had just started the diagnosis process, and they were in their 60s. And they said, I don’t know whether I’m going to complete the process to get the full diagnosis. Like I’ve had a psychologist share with me that there’s certainly a lot of in the therapy session that is indicating that they have ADHD and this up 60 Do what I just don’t who I am, I don’t want to change, I’m not going to change. So like, what is the label going to matter? I guess we as human beings try to label in order to be able to sort information and to be able to process well, if that person is here, and that person is here, then this is why this is that way. But I struggle sometimes with the way we do it for the lens of support or working arrangements or changes as opposed to actually flipping the script and going this is a strength based approach here. This person is unique The way they think the way they operate their their cognitive ability, what is the best role for them based on those unique strengths as opposed to what are those work adjustments? Yeah.

Aron Mercer: And also agency to how you work when you work, actually having that freedom to say well, this is why I’m not great at three o’clock in the in the meeting, because I start work at 530 And on strike, and actually kind of being kinder to yourself and understanding of more. It’s interesting you say that often the framing is around that. How do we make up for difference or deficits that might be there? How do we help people I was once introduced in a conference to go and speak into a little presentation on behalf of Xceptional and a really senior leader introduced me. And at the end of the introduction, which was a very kind introduction, they said, This is a great cause. We need to get behind this. Exactly. And you know, what I found to feel a bit a bit miffed, I didn’t correct them at the time. And that was a missed opportunity. But the presentation started and off I went, but that idea that this is a group of people that need our help and need to we need to make accommodations for and, look, some of that is true, I mean, autistic people as an example. So the UN estimate 80% of the world’s autistic adults are underemployed or unemployed. official unemployment rate in Australia is 32%. Is to get out. So yes, there are some barriers there. But the barriers more often than not are on the side of the workplace. Agree. I think there’s at the language we use, even the way organizations think about it does often come from that deficit mindset, and supporting and lifting up people that are disadvantaged in the workplace?

Beth Hall: Yeah, and I would argue the reason why it’s only sort of 15% is because people are not disclosing their diagnosis or their specific ways of thinking and operating. And they need for the very reason that you’ve just said, it’s seen as a cause. And that hidden talent in autism, if we were to be able to unlock those in the workplace, they’d be able to really support and drive performance. As HR practitioners, we’re in really unique position within organizations in the sense that we’re able to influence policy influence working practice, huge influence around recruitment and selection, huge influence around succession and promotion of people in the workplace. What can we do to be able to create that psychological safety and shared understanding and support so that people do feel empowered to enable them to disclose what they need? 

Aron Mercer: I think it’s a great question, I think you’ve got to look at why people don’t disclose and understand what that fear is. And look at a personal level, I kept my diagnosis private for a couple of decades, basically, the first third of my career, and I’ve reflected on why and it came down to the fact that didn’t want to give people a reason to doubt me, or to not promote me or not put me in charge of a team or whatever the opportunity was, and it also wasn’t relevant. So I think HR practitioners can lead initiatives around education, we see moronic lack of understanding of the practicalities around how neurodivergence might present in the workplace. So HR practitioners can lead education out business leaders, hiring managers, allies don’t need to be experts, but they need to be fluent. At the moment, I would argue they’re not. And so education is key. But also I think, understanding helping the organization’s understand themselves and who they’ve already employed. And so leading with data, so actually getting some other on understanding the prevalence within the workplace, how people identify intersectionality, that people are never just one thing. So actually understanding how people identify and the prevalence you’ve got, when we started Xceptional. The idea was that neurodivergence was this untapped. You use the word untapped talent pool before there were these people out there that needed to be bought in here. And so we often got engaged to help run assessment programs and bring people in and do tailored hiring programs and things like that, and it but that’s important work. And that’s kick started a lot of careers. But more and more businesses are realizing well, we’ve already got neurodivergent staff. And often the thought is, well, there’s five people over here in a in a software testing operation, and that’s the autistic group that we know about. What about all the others you don’t know about?

Beth Hall: Yeah, and it’s interesting you say that because you know, when we think about that example of education and the HR practitioners role in educating the workforce, I almost feel like there’s a step before that where HR need to get their own house in order when I think about the entire employee lifecycle and the micro aggressions that exist in that lifecycle and how to you can empower People with knowledge. But that knowledge if not applied straight away because it’s not applicable to their direct reports or their specific team doesn’t shift the culture whereas actually building it into the employee lifecycle when you’re onboarding somebody, what’s that onboarding questionnaire that isn’t about a, you know, are you divergent, but it’s about what are your preferences. There’s a great tool that I’ve seen Talley have created, where they do psychometrics as part of selection. And then based on the psychometric results, that is all based on personality, this is the best way to onboard our, you know, our likes to receive data this way. And Aron likes to, you know, versus Beth likes to do it, you know, give best some pre reading, she likes to be prepared. And like, what’s that onboarding experience when you’re divergent, where they can actually disclose without labeling themselves in order to be able to walk into an environment that allows them to leverage that strength, any examples of how HR, I’ve used an onboarding example there, but any other examples that you know, of the micro aggressions that needs to be solved for HR? 

I’ve got a role in in terms of helping the hiring managers. So hiring managers that are stressed that are time poor, they will just default to a one size fits all approach. So asking for preferences, taking time to ask the person, how do they like to give and receive feedback, we had a case where we had a divergent woman who was recently diagnosed, and she was going into a financial services firm, and the culture of that team, they worked in a hybrid manner. But whenever anyone started, they shared a meal together, like really kind of common thing to do. And so there was an eight o’clock meeting at a cafe. And so for the first time, this individual was meeting around a dozen colleagues, you know, they’d met the manager and one other manager and HR through the process, but they didn’t know people. And to cut a long story short, that was completely disempowering, and completely overwhelming for that person, before lunchtime on day one, that called our head job coach to quit, because it basically been killed with kindness that got back to their desk, after the breakfast, and then had 12 invitations for one on one meetings with no agendas. No, hey, you’re meeting Beth at 1130. And then you’re meeting this person, no explanation of what needed to be discussed or what the expectations were for this person. And this person was basically thinking, well, this is how they work. I can’t navigate this. There’s there’s an unwritten written curriculum here in terms of how they operate as a social unit that I haven’t been exposed to. And, and some simple questions might have prevented that.

Beth Hall: Yes. And it’s just it’s when metaphors, isn’t it to just assume that because we like to have a lunch that everybody likes to be in that environment, as opposed to was actually going well? Not what do we want? But what does that incoming member of our team want? And how do we help them to feel like they belong and feel like they’re supportive from day one. So that’s a really great example. And stay in with that kind of recruitment selection onboarding piece for a moment. AI will obviously increasing the use of AI within recruitment, which has many benefits in terms of productivity and be able to support the shortlisting process. But are we just going to perpetuate biases that already exist with our neurodivergent candidates? 

Aron Mercer: I think we already are, to be fair, I mean, there’s there’s few business practices which have been more impacted by technology and have the potential to be impacted than recruitment kind of process. And some research says that if you if you run a standardized process, and you use standardized testing and applicant tracking systems, that it opens up the opportunity for people that can demonstrate skill and it levels the playing field. But I’d get back to what I was saying before around the underemployment and unemployment, for example of autistic people. A lot of those technologies have been around a long time, and they clearly not working for everybody so Xceptional as an example over the last two years, so we only work with neurodiversity candidates, most of them are autistic, around 30% have a dual diagnosis of ADHD. Of the people we’ve placed in the last two years 68% of them were unemployed, of those two thirds had degrees. So clearly, if you’ve got people that are degree qualified, many of those had good experience but they’re not navigating the traditional process. The results are speaking for themselves. There’s a really great book called weapons of mass destruction by a data scientist called Cathy O’Neil in the US and her argument is that algorithms and the training data that AI users can have the potential to basically weaponize existing biases and actually, more discrimination. So, look, as practitioners, it’s really hard to work around those systems because they save so much time. And they can they can help streamline a process, but maybe consider taking an experimental approach and looking at, you know, half a dozen CVS or candidates that have been screened out on the first pass, and then finding a way to assess those candidates just as an experiment to think who are you missing out on? You talked about the recruitment process, one of the ways that we’ve kind of approached this in terms of a strength base is offering people an opportunity to demonstrate what they can do. So we built an assessment platform, we hired a team of entirely neurodivergent staff to do that, really, with the idea of building something that allowed people to show their attention to detail and their problem solving before we started looking at CVS and relevant experience and education, because often we’re talking about candidates that might have had gaps in their work history. And we know that we know that automated tools just routinely screen those out. Yeah, HR practitioners need to work with that technology. But look for ways to experiment and see what they’re missing out on.

Beth Hall: So it’s actually a really good opportunity to play with that idea that you just shared around, let’s have a skills based approach to recruitment, and to set the expectation of application or testing of skill or whatever it may be. Rather than going to let me look at your work history. Let me look at the traditional qualification. So I love that idea. So let’s move further through the employee lifecycle, then what about policies when I think about some neurodivergent people, and again, as you mentioned that there’s so different it’s not a one size fits all approach. But for some hybrid working and remote working is actually a blessing in disguise for them in terms of not having the distractions and all of the noise, what are those kinds of policies that we can implement within organizations that are neurodivergent friendly in the sense of they’re not tokenistic, that genuinely impactful policies that will make a difference to their working lives.

Aron Mercer: Look, you’ve touched on a great one there with remote working. So we’ve since we started with assessed the skills of little over 3000 neurodivergent people, and two thirds of them want to work either remotely or never stepped foot in an office or hybrid or never stepped foot in an office, it’s helpful to understand why. And it often comes down to sensory sensitivities, sleep disturbances, so people actually having trouble getting to and staying, staying to sleep or staying asleep, sensitivities around lighting, sound smells, being able to control their environment a lot more. And so we’re not talking Beth about a preference here, we’re talking about something which is fundamental to their productivity. And so policies around flexibility in how and where kind of work gets done is important. Not taking a one size fits all approach is really important. But one tip for HR practitioners, we often go in and do training and things like that. But I’m always saying to employers, start by listening to the neurodivergent staff managers you’ve already got, because they’re going to be your best teachers. If you want to employ if you want to improve the employee lifecycle. You want to get people being able to leverage their skills to their fullest and avoid burnout. Start by listening to the people you’ve already got and actually augment those policies with people with lived experience. We do our best work we’re actually working alongside an employee resource group or some some neurodivergent folk who are already in the room. You talked about kind of advancement or you touched on advancement and one of the one of the things that’s on our heart is that there’s a lot of evidence to say that once employed neurodivergent staff can thrive and in their in their area, but they often don’t. They don’t advance at the same pace. 

Beth Hall: And why do you think that is? Does the research tell you why?

Aron Mercer: Yes. So there’s a lot of evidence that says that behaviors like being vocal in meetings, networking, putting your hands up for stretch assignments, kind of playing the game. often lead to exposure and advancement. And a lot of those behaviors can be challenging, particularly for autistic people, particularly people with multiple that I guess, like we talked about intersectionality, I’m thinking about a woman of African American origin, who is also neurodivergent. And she said to me once, she doesn’t always have the energy to be open about her neurodivergence, because she already feels different enough. So kind of getting that person to put themselves out for a stretch assignment or go to the networking thing on Thursday night, because they know a director is going to be there that is, is often really foreign for neurodivergent people to do. So. HR can influence that by having really transparent policies around advancement. And what is the criteria that you need to meet in order to advance and being open and even with things like stretch assignments and special projects based on output and really measuring people’s output neurodivergent people often look a lot different Almac rates, so promote a file. But often the people that come to us aren’t. So I work with a number of neurodivergent people that Xceptional most of our staff historically, and just some of the underwhelming ways they will describe the work they do. You know, one of our tech team did a whole enterprise wide change of technology platforms two weeks before Christmas, and then did a whole lot of other stuff in amongst that at a busy time of year. And we have a weekly winds call and they set out you know, there were no issues with the changeover and they just kind of brushed it away or hang on, hang on. You’ve let it you’ve led a kind of whole transformation. I mean, we’re not bhp, but they did a fantastic job, but they just kind of undersold it. Yes. Because forget my perspective, they’re just being factual. Yeah, the migrations happened and nothing, nothing went wrong and monitoring the issues. And that’s, and that’s factual. But that might not be what gets noticed next time. Yeah.

Beth Hall: Yeah. And as you say, it’s, you know, normally the loudest person in the room, or the person that’s playing that social political game that might necessarily climb that succession career pathway faster. So what I’m hearing from you hear is the call for action for HR practitioners is level the playing field, make sure that it’s outcome based, that’s performance based, as opposed to some of the other biases that may exist. Really interesting point around, what are the other things at play for that particular individual and don’t necessarily assume I also love the point that you made around include neurodivergent employees and their development of policies, we should take that across all DNI focuses and work is don’t suggest that we know and don’t suggest that everybody is the same as well as their advancement would love to touch on the performance side of things. Because, as you mentioned, performance is not just about the work. It’s not just about the output increasingly as technology. And the focus on the IQ is moving towards more the EQ and the group intelligence. And the team work is becoming more and more a measure of performance for organizations. How are we dealing with the performance conversations when you’re divergent employees? And how can HR better equip line managers and themselves to be fair and equitable throughout that process?

Aron Mercer: Look, you could do a whole podcast on this, this is really meaty. So you could start with a really clear understanding of what is expected there. One thing that seems to be true across the candidates that we see in the people that we’ve placed, is that they have a preference for direct communication. So if people aren’t meeting their performance KPIs, they need to know and they need to know what they can do to correct that or they need to be supported in correcting that but not being kind of flippant or speaking around a topic. If expectations are this, you need to be really clear about this and having not being afraid to have direct and specific conversations where performance metrics aren’t being here’s one thing that we’re seeing, I talked a little bit about disclosure before but one thing that we’re seeing that HR practitioners are absolutely front and center in is wasting a worrying trend around people disclosing a neurodivergent condition at the point of being performance managed in a negative sense. They’ve entered a performance management process and at that point they’ve said, hey, you need to learn ADHD or you can that is a really challenging situation. We’ve had firms say to us they feel as if they’ve failed, why is this person not disclosed earlier? How do we not know that about them? How could we have supported them differently to avoid getting to this kind of process,

Beth Hall: It’s not unique to neurodivergent employees. Same with mental health, often, it’s the performance conversation, that’s the catalyst to disclose. And I guess we’ve kind of got to the point with that employee that they need to disclose in order to be able to get the right support or allowances or accommodations or understanding or whatever it is that they need in order to be able to navigate that performance improvement plan or whatever is going in place. So I guess it comes back to that first thing you said around making sure that our managers and our HR practitioners are trained in order to be able to understand not only the language, but the environment in which neurodivergent employees thrive and take that strength based approach, because it might actually turn that performance conversation on its head and actually become our thank you so much for sharing. Now, let’s look at this other world, that’s actually a better fit for everything that you’ve just shared with us. So what a great opportunity to change the narrative. We’ve talked about recruitment and selection and policies and performance. Who’s doing it? Well, Aron, give us some best practice examples of who you’ve been working with that you just go, you just did these three to five things that would change the game for neurodivergent employees.

Aron Mercer: Look at some really great examples. So there’s an agency in a creative agency that has just started offering a really flexible policy, that’s funding diagnosis for people who weren’t going to explore diagnosis, because that can be expensive. And that’s available, I believe, for the employee, but also for children. And it’s flexibility then around work. And that led to like, it’s led to some recognition, but it’s led to a lower staff turnover. And they’ve been able to attract a whole bunch of people, often the ones you’re reading about or the tokenistic ones that, really, that they’ve got this kind of best boat program, but organizations that are taking an intersectional wellness approach, and they’re looking at holistically around, he talked before around introducing behaviors and ways of working rather than labels. So the best organizations that we see are actually saying, Well, this is how I like to give and receive feedback. This is how I best work. And yes, it might be because I’m an ADHD. But this is how I need to kind of be my best. And it’s not done in a silo. And it’s not done as a one off thing. In terms of straight out neurodivergent employment. There’s some amazing case studies locally and around the world. There’s, there’s groups like Microsoft and sap that I’ve got well established programs. In Australia, there’s companies like otter, Khan and Australian spatial analytics that are doing some core work, and employing majority autistic people. Our heart, though, is really as well, for organizations that have, I guess, a bit more representative of the communities they work in and their customer base. And they’re kind of doing things across the board, not just part of it kind of siloed approach. Yeah. And

Beth Hall: It’s interesting when you think about some of the examples that you’re given, they’re not tokenistic, or initiative based, because they’re cultural. So as a culture, I want to create a culture of belonging. Therefore, I am genuinely curious as to your work preferences, not in order to label you or put you in a box, but actually to be able to build relationships and trust and community. So look, I think there’s some great examples that you’ve given there that we can start tomorrow. Here’s the question though. Like, why aren’t we, to your point earlier? This is not new. This is not a new conversation. Yes, it is more prevalent, because there’s better diagnoses in schools, and therefore we’re becoming more aware. And the younger generations coming through are just getting out from the stigma and just normalizing these things, which is all great things. But what are the blockers? Is it the CEOs, the managers, HR, like, what are the blockers that you’re seeing in businesses, that is stopping your suggestions actually becoming part of the way we do work?

Aron Mercer: So I’m in in my spare time, I’m writing a book, actually, and it won’t be available for mainstream itself through universities, but hopefully I’ll have it done in the next couple of months, but the working title of it was don’t be scared. A manager’s guide to neurodiversity. I think fear is often fear and kind of I guess a lack of understanding, there’s a real risk aversion. And what that does that fear then pushes the burden of kind of advocacy on the individual who’s new. And they’ve said, Look, I’m not going to go around and tell everybody, but I’m really happy for you too. But the businesses are so worried about saying the wrong thing. So I think that comes from a place of fear, and also a lack of understanding of the practical things that they can do. And the businesses themselves hiring managers, HR practitioners, they’re stretched. And so this could just be another thing that they need to kind of consider, I guess my core message is, you’ve already hired people. And if you don’t know you’ve already hired people go and go and look and seek to understand. And if you don’t, if you’re a small business, and you haven’t hired people, you’re probably serving them as customers or living next door to them. There’s yeah, there’s not a tiny niche group. 

Beth Hall: Yeah, they’re probably in your family based on what we’ve talked about.

They are invisible, largely, and you understand a very small sliver, we understand representation, individual contributor, kind of that kind of stereotype and that kind of Sheldon Cooper kind of stereotype, and that often informs our beliefs in the workplace. 

Beth Hall: Yeah, it comes back to that training that you mentioned, and just just let’s have genuine curiosity. If you have that fear, and you’re not really sure what is the right terminology, or what is the right approach is to ask questions. Having that curiosity and asking people questions to better understand where they’re coming from, you can’t really go wrong. Before I jump to a scenario, because we always end an episode with a scenario, it would be remiss of me not to ask you this question. fairly early on in my appointment, RV, someone that a past colleague contacted me and they said, Beth, you’ve got a platform now. And I really need you to solve this. When HR gonna start supporting parents of neurodivergent children? Because we’ve spent so long working on how do we support working parents. But it is such a different story when I have a neurodivergent child. And it is such a different hybrid working when they’re off school, even though they’re in their teens? And how do we help HR really understand what their employees and navigating when it comes to being a parent of neurodivergent children? So any advice strategies, tips for HR on how they can help in this space? 

Aron Mercer: Yeah, and look, as a parent myself, yeah, I’m certainly kind of navigating that at the moment. I think HR can support businesses through education. So through kind of understanding, understanding that flexibility, kindness and patience can go a long way. Because even things like school drop offs in the morning, depending on the age of kids, they can be stressful for everybody. But in families where there’s neurodivergent, kids that have kind of stricter routines have aversions to certain kinds of foods, have sleep disturbances, have some might have behavioral challenges, or fixed ways of operating, if things go amiss, because suddenly, the put an 8am Zoom call or teams meeting in the calendar that can set the whole day on a different path. If you’ve got colleagues that, you know, they’ve got neurodivergent kids, having some space for them, and some kindness and patience, some flexible ways of working, I think that’s really important. I was speaking with someone recently who works for a large industrial company. And they were talking about this wellness initiative that was being launched. And there was a whole lot of kind of health and sleep related and diet related kind of things. And but at the same week, that wellness initiative was launched, there was a change to the policy around flexible work, and returned to the office mandate for two to three days a week, depending on the level of seniority of the role. And this person was going through their own diagnosis, they had a diagnosis of a child, they had low vision, and so they had some some assistive technology. And for them, no amount of kind of wellness initiatives, we’re going to make up for the fact that that world was about to change significantly. You need to have policies that are adopted but having some flexibility and some understanding and some kindness for parents because it can be incredibly hard for them to to thoughts are in in like the kind of bookends of days.

Beth Hall: It’s interesting, like, there’s definitely a discourse around kindness and flexibility, but also these scenarios you Given the exact scenarios these this parent gave me, she said, when the when the early morning zoom call comes in, or when the schedule is changed, that impacts my child’s routine, it throws the entire household. And it’s tricky, isn’t it? Because the employee needs to be flexible with the organization in order to afford themselves a flexibility for themselves. But it’s not that they’re trying to be difficult. It’s not that they’re trying to say, well, this is my routine, and therefore all of my teammates need to sit around my routine, it’s actually a genuine need. It’s not a preference. And I think it’s helping people understand that because it’s not a lived experience that they have. So they don’t necessarily relate. 

Aron Mercer: Yeah, and this is where I think education and some empathy comes into it. Because parents with school aged children might kind of roll their eyes and think, Well, it’s not easy for me in the morning, either. And that’s true. And there’s also people that have got elderly parents or relatives they’re caring for everyone’s got stuff. I think it’s understanding the uniqueness of a neurodiverse family, and what are the particular challenges they might might face around changes to routines. If I can just go back to something you said before, around, kind of awareness and making assumptions, we had a scenario where someone has been Performance Manager, there was someone that found themselves that great performer really efficient, well respected, they found themselves in a performance management process. The reason they found themselves in that process was they were consistently late to meetings between 10 and 12 minutes late to meetings. I started then showing up late to client meetings, that was the tipping point, this kind of whole process ensured started off and the person hadn’t disclosed their autistic and ADHD. And what came out of that process was an unpacking of the fact that this person found the first 10 minutes of the meetings that were held weekly, really confusing, pointless in her words, and really quite hard to navigate. Because they were all small talk. You’d have a family, she’d have a family, she didn’t care if calling would be on the weekend. She didn’t have hits, she wasn’t interested in what the teams were interested in. But that same kind of banter happened on the client calls, and so diligently though thinking okay, well, I’ll do some, I’ll do some work. And I’ll dial in at 10. Past and then. And then they did that for a while. And I guess the failing there is the manager and the colleagues. Well, Beth Yeah. Good afternoon. Glad you could join us sticker snicker, but not a direct conversation that look, we expect you to be here. After the first time that they were late at 10. I understand things happen. I was late from morning on very rarely.

Beth Hall: Just a question. Like not even a statement of you’re expected to be here. Let’s lead with curiosity. Hey, what’s going on?

Aron Mercer: Are you okay? And and that kind of example, where you just you are assuming you’re assuming that the person is disorganized, disinterested, unprofessional and not asking the question, it’s a great pickup really led to a really unnecessary and quite destructive kind of process. You could have avoided that with some curiosity. 

Beth Hall: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, so challenging to be able to come back from that, because that trust has been diluted by not being curious and asking you if someone’s okay to understand what’s happening for them. And going straight into performance management. I mean, that is just poor HR practice.

Aron Mercer: We’re happy to report that person stayed. And what they do now is they actually go and they’re one of the notetakers. And they come to the action points, but they say that they have once a month, they have a silent kind of voices off, just text chat. The person also has a delay in kind of auditory processing. So they have a text chat, and they kind of banter and they tell jokes or share things in a text format, rather than verbally as a way to include this person in that in that process and keep them. 

Beth Hall: Yeah, I love that. It’s great. See what great things can come out of just having an open transparent conversation. Hey, that’s fine. We’re going to scenario Are you ready? I think so. So at the end of every episode, we’d like to give a scenario that’s playing out somewhere across Australia. So you are a HR manager for a large organization. And one of your neurodivergent employees has received a poor performance review. They haven’t met as many of their KPIs as their peers so they were compared and benchmarked against them and they have received feedback from their manager that they aren’t presenting well in client facing meetings or client In facing situations, so the employee tells you they haven’t felt supported by their manager, and that they haven’t received this clear feedback or an indication of what their presentation skills are lacking in. And they can sense that their manager is frustrated with them. But equally, they’re feeling a bit frustrated with the ambiguity and that misunderstanding, how do you suggest this HR manager should address the employee’s concerns to make sure that not only do they get the support they need, but also their manager gets the right education about how they might need to change their approach.

Aron Mercer: Look at this, this, as you say, is really common scenario. And as a starting point, our philosophy is, is ATP, it’s really simple. Ask the person so the manager is making assumptions. And it sounds like they’re not engaging the employee to kind of understand the rationale around their performance challenges. And also, it sounds as if they’re not giving them explicit feedback. We talked before around the preference that many neurodivergent people have for direct and explicit feedback. And so there’s probably a lot of missed coaching opportunities over the course that’s led up to this performance review, where the manager has missed the opportunity to give some direct and explicit feedback, understanding the employee’s communication and social preferences. So do they have delays in verbal processing? Are they missing things in terms of picking up body language? Or what’s being unsaid? Or are they comfortable with small talk, we don’t know. And it could be that that person might be better suited to a different kind of role. But without giving him some specific feedback and understanding what the challenges are, it’s really hard to know if employees can be coached in help them understand how the interactions with customers fit into the bigger picture. So neurodivergent, people love seeing the big picture. You could argue everyone does, but kind of helping them understand how those customer meetings as customer interactions help towards quarterly and yearly targets, for example, the importance of customers in their business and the importance of those client facing meetings. And then you might consider taking an experimental approach and giving the person a slightly different role in those with we’ve been in meetings with some of our newer divergent staff and external clients. And one lady said to me, after one of our calls, I’ve done a poor job of planning a call, to be perfectly honest. And they said to me, I don’t know I didn’t know when in the call was my turn to talk literally autistic woman did not know when during the call, and I could have told her 32nd minute mark or whatever, but a bit of preparation and saying, Well, you’re the expert, Beth, around this quarterly data that we’ve got around this particular product release, I’m going to throw to you during the meeting. Can you be ready to talk about that? No, I mean, people on the spot in a client facing meeting, say, look, Beth, I’m gonna come to you in a second. But I’d like to hear from Tim now about this. And then you’ve actually given them a little bit of time to kind of get ready for the conversation. You’re signaling the fact that you’re going to call them in, no one likes being in a meeting where they don’t have a role. Yeah, giving actually having a little bit of prep and giving them a role and some clear instructions. You don’t have to script it, but kind of saying, Look, this is what I’d love you to cover, and then kind of coaching them after that.

Beth Hall: Yeah, yeah. So going back to that clarity piece. And it’s interesting, when you gave the example of give feedback and coaching, it might actually be in that scenario, that the manager is role modeling, often managers will role model, you know, I’ll go with them to the client meeting, and show them how it’s done. And it’s putting again, the ownership on the employee to be able to pick up on social cues to be able to pick up on their nuance around the positioning and language that their manager uses as opposed to just being really explicit with them to say, this is why I start every client meeting with small talk. This builds a relationship and trust and giving that context and rationale and reasons behind why things are is a great pickup. So thank you so much for responding to that. And thank you so much for this conversation. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed that. I think we could go for another hour. But thank you so much, Aron, really appreciate it.

Aron Mercer: Oh, and look, I love that AHRI are looking into this and kind of investing in building other stuff. Turning around neurodivergence in the workplace. It’s fantastic.

Beth Hall: Perfect. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Let’s Take This Offline. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts, and share with your colleagues and network. To learn more about the Australian HR Institute, visit our website, ahri.com.au. 

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